Brazil develops partnership with Google on disaster alerts

The Ministry of Regional Development (MDR) and Google announced on Tuesday (Jun. 7) a partnership to expand the use of alert tools on natural disasters in Brazil.

The partnership between the Brazilian National Civil Defense and Google in issuing public alerts started in 2015, specifically for warnings about floodings. Now, seven new types of alerts have been made available on floods, landslides, forest fires, hail and windstorms, heavy rains, and dam ruptures.

Google alerts are triggered when partners, such as the National Institute of Meteorology (Inmet), send a new warning of a possible natural disaster of a moderate or severe degree. As a result, the information becomes available at the top of the user´s search list on the platform. The alert is also available in the Google Maps app and, if desired, the user can trigger mobile notifications to receive the warnings. If users access Google Maps in a risk area, they will also receive an alert.

"With the expansion of this partnership, we hope to contribute to the efforts of the Civil Defense in the distribution of qualified information to the population, so that more lives can be saved," Google manager in Latin America Luísa Phebo said.

The National Secretary for Protection and Civil Defense Colonel Alexandre Lucas explained the biggest challenge currently is not to generate information about alerts, but to make people understand the existing risks, and adopt a change in behavior that allows self-protection and community protection.

"A partner like Google, reporting natural disasters in real-time in all its possible tools, stimulates the perception of risk, the reasoning of self-protection and community protection," he explained.

Alert messages are made available when users are registered on the Public Alerts Disclosure Interface (Idap), through which state and municipal civil defense authorities send warnings using SMS, Telegram, Pay TV and Google.